The Best destination in the Carebbean for Spinning Fishermen

Jardines de la Reina is today perhaps the finest light tackle fishing to be found anywhere in the Caribbean. Not only is this some of the best flats fishing in the world for fly fishermen, but anglers using spinning and bait casting tackle are catching a wide variety of fish along the reef the channels and the blue water. It is not uncommon for anglers to catch more than twenty species of fish in just a few days time. Huge groupers,  3 kind of snappers (up to 100+lbs), horse eye jacks and jack crevalle, barracuda, sharks and other blue water fish abound.

If you guys are really into fishing with artificial lures, this is the place where you’d like to bring the whole of the stock because the fishes you are likely to encounter are many and very different from each other. To make things a bit easier we’ll try to gather the finned army into 3 different groups and related tackle: light, medium and heavy.

Light
Bonefish, Yellowtail Snappers, Baby Tarpon, Schoolmasters, and all sorts of youngsters of the different species can be included in this category.  The perfect (almost) match could be a (6 or 7 ft) rod, fast action, lure 1 / 4 to 5 / 8 oz line 6-17lb. A travel pole is suggested, I don’t think you want to carry around one of those large rod cases, if you can break it into 3 pieces is great otherwise, you can do as good with a 2 piece. For this lighter outfit you might want to use an 8 to 10 lb mono, maybe tied to a 20 lb leader. The use of braided lines with such light lures is not recommended and the use of a thin mono will not affect your casting distance. The reel size should be around 2 or 3.000
Light Lures
We suggest a nice selection of jig heads with grubs and other soft plastic lures.  If is the Bones you’re after, don’t bring very bright colors because they won’t take it, a limited selection of natural pattern grubs will do the trick. As far as the other critters you can use a wide array of different artificials, from soft plastic, to plugs to poppers or walkers. We do pretty well with the likes of Yo-Zuri Hydro Tiger and Crystal Minnows, Rapala Suspending Jerk, Skitter Pop and Skitter Walk, Mirrolure Top Dog Jr. and Catch 2.000, Excalibur Spit’n Image and Pop’n Image and Super Spook Jr.T he sizes should range between 2.7 and 4 inches, naturals colors do good but the guy who’s writing this has a particular adoration for yellowish things.

Medium
Tarpon, Jacks (Crevalle, Horse Eye, Yellow), Cudas, Kingfish, Snappers (Mutton, Dog, Mangrove, Cubera), Groupers, Blackfin Tunas, Albacores. This bunch of bad boys will represent 70% of your daily catch and if some of them will be so kind to pull straight not trying to tangle the line into the reef, others won’t be so polite so you’d better be ready. A stout 7’ rod, rated for 10-25lb line and 1 to 2.5 oz lures is your weapon. Match it with a 4.000 size reel and # 20 to # 30lb test braided, you won’t regret the advantage of its non-stretch qualities and you will be able to spool more yards in your reel. A mono leader is very much recommended, a couple feet of 40 to 80 lb, your choice; a piece of wire wouldn’t bother that much.

Medium Lures
POPPERS! Sorry for the enthusiasm but as far as your humble writer is concerned I would just bring a good bunch of 5 to 8 inches surface bricks and a handful of Jigs. Hab’s Perfect Poppers and Perfect Squids, High Tide Exploders, Rapala Skitter Pop, Yo-Zuri Surface Cruiser and Hydro Tiger, Gibbs Polaris Poppers in the range we mentioned before are the best bet. Put in the box also some 1 to 3 oz buck tail jigs and you’re fine. If you like traditional plugs , bring those as well, they catch fish too, even though with a lesser show.  Colors. Any color is fine as long as it is…yellow! Sorry, we have a monochromatic vision sometimes: bring some Parrot and Orange too, just to feel a bit more “covered”. For the jigs we had success with red/white, red/yellow, white/chartreuse, the groupers aren’t very finicky though and if you find the right spot and do some deep jigging you can find yourself in a very funny situation sometimes.

Heavy
Jardines de la Reina is Cubera Snapper ‘s Paradise (and sharks and Goliath Grouper).The Cuberas of that evil reef range between 20 and 140 lb and I can assure you that a medium outfit, most of the times, is absolutely useless. If a 60 pounder charge your popper (yes they love poppers), 20 feet from the boat, it will peel 30 ft of # 30 lb braided in a nanosecond and next thing you hear is a very much annoying “snap”. So, if you really want to target those animals you might want to bring a (7 to 9ft) rod rated for # 80lb line and able to cast 6 oz lures even though your poppers will range around 3 to 4 oz. Put a heavy duty reel, 5.000 or 6.000, # 80 to # 100 braided line and a # 80 to # 130lb mono leader. Then you start tossing your surface lure and pray…. even with this outfit it is very easy to break’e off. The same stuff can be used for deep jigging, it is plenty of big monsters in the reef and you surely need some extra help if one decides to have breakfast with your jig.

Heavy Lures
Big poppers and the same jigs you were using with the medium outfit. My favourite are Yo-Zuri Surface Bull (8 inches 4 oz), Gibbs Polaris Poppers (3,4 oz) and Hab’s Perfect Poppers (4 oz). Remember, you can live without the heavy outfit, eventually is the least required but when you will see the copper hump coming out of the water chasing your lure, you might regret it…..